Game publishers remaining quiet on used game policies for Xbox One

Microsoft's used-disc-blocking option seems to have taken publishers by surprise.

Microsoft publicly gave its opinion of used games—it's another story for game publishers.

Andrew Cunningham

Microsoft is taking a lot of heat for implementing an online check-in system that will allow publishers to explicitly block the resale of used game discs on the Xbox One. But it's the publishers themselves that will have to decide whether or not to take advantage of the ability Microsoft has given them. So far at least, no publisher has been willing to go on the record definitively stating that they are for or against the existence of second-hand game discs on Microsoft's next system.

This might be because these publishers were seemingly caught flat-footed when Microsoft announced its policy a couple of week ago. "We have not received anything from Microsoft until today on this one," CD Project Red co-founder and Joint CEO Marcin Iwiński told Eurogamer just after Microsoft's licensing policy was announced. "Before we form any definite opinions here, we would like to have this process explained in details by the platform holder."

(Later, Iwiński defended CD Project Red's decision to release on Microsoft platforms despite the system's online check-ins. "We couldn't simply not release The Witcher 3 on Xbox One. We want to make sure that every single player will have access to our game...")

Bethesda Softworks told Gamespot last week that the company "[hasn't] had time to fully understand and evaluate their policy." And Electronic Arts' Peter Moore told Polygon that the company had "not internally even begun to sit down and answer those questions [regarding used games]," also suggesting that the major publisher didn't know about Microsoft's plans ahead of time.

So if publisher pressure was part of the reason for Microsoft allowing used-disc-blocking in the first place, EA wasn't part of it. "As the guy who is the chief operating officer of Electronic Arts, I can tell you that EA did not aggressively lobby for the platform holders to put some gating function in there to allow or disallow used games," Moore said.

What about the PS4

Despite the strong statements supporting used games at Sony's press conference, Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO and resident Jack Tretton admitted later that there's technically nothing stopping a publisher from adding its own DRM to games on the PlayStation 4 (even if Sony doesn't require any kind of online checks at the system level). Still, Sony Worldwide Studios VP Scott Rohde told Polygon that it would be "surprising" if publishers decided to go that route on the PS4.

"Technically they could do something, but it's the standard we're setting that we believe is the right standard and I believe that's the way it's going to work," he said. "All those publishers were sitting in [our] press conference last night. When Jack [Tretton] gave punch after punch after punch and the house almost came down with all the cheers, they heard that. They heard it loud and clear and they saw the reaction to what our friends in green talked about. I think it's pretty clear that we've set a nice precedent."

At least EA's Frank Gibeau told The Wall Street Journal that EA would be announcing its used games policy on the Xbox One within the next couple of weeks. That's more than companies like Konami, Namco Bandai, Warner Bros., Sega, and Capcom have said, instead offering blunt "no comments" on the matter in various press accounts. Capcom went so far as to blame the lack of concrete information on the fact that the company "has not announced any titles for Xbox One," as if its games wouldn't be coming to Microsoft's system sooner than later.

While other publishers also refuse to go on the record on the issue, a few at least seem willing to hint at which way they're leaning. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told Gamespot that they "haven't decided yet" whether they'd allow used games and that it was "too early to take a real position." But while he suggested that "lots of people are buying a game, reselling it, and buying another one... It has a very positive impact on the industry," he also said that "we have to make sure that there's not too much money lost in between so there's good efficiency there."

Take-Two hasn't publicly commented on the matter since Microsoft's announcement, but in an investor-focused call last month, CEO Strauss Zelnick stated that "our view about used games has been, as opposed to whining or figuring out ways to punish the consumer for buying used games, we've figured out we better delight the consumer." That said, he acknowledged that "if Microsoft has figured out a way to tax used games, then we should get paid, too," leaving a bit of wiggle room for the company's position.

At least one developer has been willing to speak out against used games, though. "You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing. The numbers do NOT work people," former Epic developer Cliff Bleszinski tweeted last week. "The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of devs," he continued. "Newsflash. This is why you’re seeing free to play and microtransactions everywhere. The disc based day one $60 model is crumbling."

For all the rigmarole around the issue right now, industry analyst Michael Pachter doesn't think any publisher will be foolhardy enough to actually take Microsoft up on the opportunity to block the sale of used game discs. "In our view, any publisher that disables used gaming risks a backlash or boycott of its titles by gamers, negatively impacting sales," the analyst said in an investors note last week. Analysis firm DFC Intelligence, on the other hand, said that Microsoft's whole strategy for the system is "deeply flawed" and lowered its sales expectations for the Xbox One while raising those for the PlayStation 4.

Yeah, I don't buy into the Used Games are Evil bullshit. Why should video games have a special protection that no other market enjoys? Used Books. Used Music. Used Movies. Used Cars. Used Clothes. Pre-Owned (Used) cell phones.

I'd be willing to bet that most of the companies (I'm looking at you, EA) will take advantage of the new "features" to curb piracy and used game sales. However after Microsoft's unprecedented beating during E3, I doubt any of them will own up to it yet.

"This might be because these publishers were seemingly caught flat-footed when Microsoft announced its policy a couple of week ago."

Maybe because the online system was not designed to block used games sales, but rather a byproduct of allowing users to resell discs? It has to check to make sure an installed/cloud available disc can't be played/downloaded after it has been resold to a retailer like Gamestop, it would only be small step further to allow a publisher to stop their games from being relicensed.

"The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of devs," he continued. "Newsflash. This is why you’re seeing free to play and microtransactions everywhere. The disc based day one $60 model is crumbling."

This sounds very similar to the old Movie industry excuse for high pricing (ie. the movies cost so much to make because you all want bigger and better).

However neither of these industries seem to pay attention to the public saying they don't need anything to graphically better, I don't want the same story/game told over and over again with better graphics/more spectacle, I want something original.

As a gamer, I never demanded game development budgets in the tens of millions. I also never demanded that you spend millions on marketing. All I expect is a game that is enjoyable, as bug-free as possible, and doesn't require me to spend an arm and a leg to purchase it (don't gut half the content to sell it as DLC later). While I expect that, I don't demand it because that is hard to come by these days (sadly). What I do demand is the ability to not have games hamstrung by needless online requirements to satisfy your need to control everything through DRM. And if you can't do that, at least make the online portion worth sacrificing ownership (SimCity, I'm looking at you).

Wonder why the $60 disk model is crumbling? Because I've spent more time playing games that cost less than $20 to care to spend $60 on many games. Why do I play so many <$20 games? Because so many of them are just so damned good. Know why I play so few $60+ games? Because they are often times terrible in terms of bugs (Civ V), advertised features vs reality (SimCity), or lack of content (nearly all AAA titles these days).

Sure, you may have bean counters, BAs, and all sort of managers talking about DLC, DRM, freemium, and all these other buzz words, but you've been talking about that crap for a decade now, and you're still complaining about a crumbling business model. Now you want to turn all games into licenses with no real product just so some managers can claim "we did our best" as the ship continues to burn and slip into the dark, cold ocean.

Why not try spending less time focusing on movie-quality imagery that doesn't do much to enhance the game and make the primary focus gamer enjoyment? You're willing to throw out everything that gamers care about in the desperate attempt to keep afloat, how about you stop that for a second, take a look at all the small indie developers that are eating your lunch, ask yourselves "what are we doing wrong," and then be serious about how you AAA publishers have done nothing but drive the heart of the gaming community away all in the understandable but misguided attempt to expand your market ever wider.

Maybe because the online system was not designed to block used games sales, but rather a byproduct of allowing users to resell discs? It has to check to make sure an installed/cloud available disc can't be played/downloaded after it has been resold to a retailer like Gamestop, it would only be small step further to allow a publisher to stop their games from being relicensed.

Then why not occasionally require the disc to be inserted to play? The DRM scheme is more convoluted. Plus, even if it's easy to allow games to disable reselling, that doesn't justify doing so.

"The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of devs," he continued. "Newsflash. This is why you’re seeing free to play and microtransactions everywhere. The disc based day one $60 model is crumbling."

This sounds very similar to the old Movie industry excuse for high pricing (ie. the movies cost so much to make because you all want bigger and better).

However neither of these industries seem to pay attention to the public saying they don't need anything to graphically better, I don't want the same story/game told over and over again with better graphics/more spectacle, I want something original.

I'm pretty sure you're confusing your opinion with the actual behavior of the market for both movies and games.

I personally bought Crysis 3 for the full $60 because I loved the Crysis 2 despite the many reoccurring bugs that rendered the game unplayable online for weeks at a time.

Crysis 3's live servers have not had more than 500 players online at any one time since a month after launch and the only game types that have active matches going on were crash site, ffa, and team deathmatch.

Regardless of how many devs the game required to build and maintain, blocking used games definitely will make those numbers even lower.

I think the best parallel to the One and its policies in recent history is the DIVX home video system of the 90s. You bought the disc, but were tied down by a need for constant connectivity (via good old phone lines, of course) so that the studio would make more money.

In this case, the PS4 is the DVD to Microsoft's DIVX, and if Microsoft and the publishers can only offer a more expensive less capable system with anti-consumer policies, we might witness, a demographic notoriously content to get screwed by DRM, actually act against this nonsense.

Maybe because the online system was not designed to block used games sales, but rather a byproduct of allowing users to resell discs? It has to check to make sure an installed/cloud available disc can't be played/downloaded after it has been resold to a retailer like Gamestop, it would only be small step further to allow a publisher to stop their games from being relicensed.

Then why not occasionally require the disc to be inserted to play? The DRM scheme is more convoluted. Plus, even if it's easy to allow games to disable reselling, that doesn't justify doing so.

I absolutely think they should have an offline mode using the disc for authentication, as has been the norm for consoles, no idea why they don't. Not sure why they enabled resale blocking either, maybe to give the publishers incentive to keep publishing on their platform to outweigh the new cloud game sharing features?

I never said they had a good reason for it, just speculating on how it might have come about.

Well, I for one really like the Steam model, and would love to see the XBone to work similarly. Problem is, the part of the Steam model I like is the fact that after the $60 game has been out for 3, 6, 12 months, I can get it for $20, Or at holiday sales, etc.If XB One games work like that, I'll probably buy quite a few. I'm not holding my breath though.

Steam sale just around the corner, Mid July. I've been waiting to buy Bioshock and plenty of others. I could careless that I can't resell them afterwards or someone else can't play them. As long as this happens with the new Xbox as well, I'm perfectly fine with the Steam like DRM.

Yeah, I don't buy into the Used Games are Evil bullshit. Why should video games have a special protection that no other market enjoys? Used Books. Used Music. Used Movies. Used Cars. Used Clothes. Pre-Owned (Used) cell phones.

I suppose the largest problem is that most item get a long life before they are moved into the second hand market. Cell phones are renovated every year or two. Clothes might get sold after a similar time period, although it is risky as any damage can lower its value considerably. Cars usually are sold only after two years. Music can be listened over and over again. Books are reasonably cheap, so most people do not resell them as often.

Video games tend to last for ten to forty hours of playtime. Some people even see the credits roll after just a weekend of playtime. These days, after you play a game once, you move to the next one - unless there is an online component.

Almost all of the brick and mortar shops are telling you in your face they will buy the game you are getting right now. That is not exactly the case when you buy the other items, are they? Or did any car dealer tell you he/she is going to buy your car again after three months for 50% sale price?

So, if Microsoft, Sony et al want to reduce the size of the second hand market, they need either make the new game market more alluring, e.g. give Gamestop larger margins on new copies and lower its RRP, or go fully digital, as with the PC and mobile market.

Jack Tretton admitted later that there's technically nothing stopping a publisher from adding its own DRM to games on the PlayStation 4 (even if Sony doesn't require any kind of online checks at the system level). Still, Sony Worldwide Studios VP Scott Rohde told Polygon that it would be "surprising" if publishers decided to go that route on the PS4.

EA already has checks (Activation Codes preventing resale) just like this today for stuff like Battlefield on all platforms, so I don't see that changing in the future.

I can't help but think that all the backlash against these used game policies will be, if successful, a fairly pyrrhic victory. Sure, used disc-based games will keep their current status, but my growing library of digital downloads still do not have any means to loan them out, sell, or even basic protection that I can keep playing them if Steam decides to terminate my account.

DLC is non-resellable. Digital downloads are non-loanable. If a publisher wants to limit game resales, simply move more of the content into those forms, problem solved. That's an important battle for our future rights; this console generation kept the spinny disc slot; will the next?

I think what's happening is publishers are finally getting what they wished for, and the reality is setting in. That reality being they have to reconcile the benefits of their games getting trade-in credit is the flip side of them not getting sales from their new games being passed on for used copies. That the early adopter crowd will likely shun the XBO and locked games, and the folks who seethe potential upside it won't be enough to make it worthwhile. And that those gamers will want, if not demand, regular sales like every other digital distribution service has, which may PO retail partners. And that if the XBO flops, they can't really use MS as leverage against Sony to get more favorable terms and the like.

And, really... If I buy into a system like this, I want $50 launch games, just like I see on Steam. I want F2p titles. I want gifting, a full social platform, trading unused licenses, good to great sales, big and small games. Overall, I want and expect more, not less, because of being tied into an ecosystem.

It's hard to believe the publishers don't have any opinion they could share on blocking used games. It never occurred to the execs at EA that if you require a season pass to play a game, it would kill the used game market for that game?

Trying to say "well, we didn' know about what MS was doing" and keeping silent is a bit rich.

However neither of these industries seem to pay attention to the public saying they don't need anything to graphically better, I don't want the same story/game told over and over again with better graphics/more spectacle, I want something original.

GL Microsoft, following the success of Window RT and Windows 8, presenting the XBone, a locked proprietary console that few gamers will want. Is it time to fire a higher up or two..

This is probably the most amusing bit of this whole used-game argument. People keep saying things like "no DRM" or "not locked down" but it's just not true.

They're all "locked proprietary console[s]". The only gaming platforms that aren't are your average PC and Android. The PS4 will simply maintain the console status quo when it comes to reselling games.

Cliff Bleszinski, the same guy who tried to defend Adam Orth, who it turns out was merely leaking MS's true philosophy a bit too early. Not every game needs to be a AAA title with millions of sales to turn a profit. Look at minecraft or indie games. Or niche titles such as Atlas. These big-budget titles are not necessarily more fun to play, they're just big-budget. If certain market conditions are no longer tenable, then products and companies adjust or go bankrupt. There is nothing inherently wrong with companies going belly up or losing money. It's called the free market. There is no need for artificial workarounds such as draconian DRM and additional taxes. Trust me, if Assasin creed games no longer made money, they wouldn't keep making them. This is the same for any industry. In fact, it seems the government is constantly coming up with regulations to fix the economic messes created by the last round of regulations.

This might be because these publishers were seemingly caught flat-footed when Microsoft announced its policy a couple of week ago.

Quote:

Bethesda Softworks told Gamespot last week that the company "[hasn't] had time to fully understand and evaluate their policy."

Quote:

"As the guy who is the chief operating officer of Electronic Arts, I can tell you that EA did not aggressively lobby for the platform holders to put some gating function in there to allow or disallow used games," Moore said.

What.

What?

WHAT?!

I always assumed that the reason Microsoft did any of this shit was because publishers told them to. That they said, "Do it or else we go to Sony who will," thus theoretically making Sony and Microsoft both do it. And if one did and the other didn't, the one who did would get all the games.

But... if this was all really Microsoft's idea from the start... WHY? What do you gain by any of this? An extra bit from licensing dollars on used games? Don't you get some kickbacks from GameStop as is? Did you think Sony and Nintendo were going to do it too? Did you think customers were going to like it?

"You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing. The numbers do NOT work people," former Epic developer Cliff Bleszinski tweeted last week. "The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of devs,"

Hey, Cliff? Here's an idea:

Stop making games with that high a budget!

If you need a thousand people and $10+ million to make a game, it's not worth it. If the budget for a game exceeds the projected income, you lower the budget of the game. That's how finances work. You can make the same Assassin's Creed gameplay with a lower budget. It just won't have as high fidelity of graphics and such.

End the eternal prickwaving contest you game developers have for "greater realism". All it's doing is driving the AAA studios towards ruin. Or ruinous decisions like this used game crap.

Well, I for one really like the Steam model, and would love to see the XBone to work similarly. Problem is, the part of the Steam model I like is the fact that after the $60 game has been out for 3, 6, 12 months, I can get it for $20, Or at holiday sales, etc.If XB One games work like that, I'll probably buy quite a few. I'm not holding my breath though.

That, and then there's the fact that you can always go download a game you bought from Steam again years later if you want. The only reason Valve can do that is that they're not a public company with "what have you done for me lately" shareholders. As a public company, MSoft is under the gun to cut costs wherever it can, which often translates into "the customer can go F himself after he's stopped being a revenue stream"--look at stranded "Plays for sure" customers and the like.

I dread the day that Gabe N. decides to hang it up and sell, or take Valve public.

Without used games, the only game I would have ever played as a kid was the cartridge that came with my NES. with both my parents being teachers, they wouldn't have been able to feed the gaming habits of 3 children, if not for being able to rent games from the store or buy cheap used games.

It's sad that people like cliffyb have forgotten what gaming is about and what it means to grow a future generation of gamers. Its probably easy for the guy who owns a gallardo to say everyone should be only buying new games. If he thinks used game buyers are killing gaming, I guess it's a good thing he just retired.

So if the publishers aren't behind MS's DRM, what was MS's motive for implementing it? To screw customers for the hell of it, or because MS is badly managed and doesn't have a clear strategy?

I really believe that the publishers wanted it. Sure, maybe the developers were caught unaware, but I'm pretty sure that upper management at EA, Ubisoft, etc knew about this, it would be one of the major selling points for releasing games on XB1.

Now, maybe they didn't expect for Microsoft to make it their problem. Microsoft is definitely taking the heat for announcing it, but all that ire and angst will be directed at the first publisher who restricts games. (To an extent, Microsoft gave them a option that they don't dare use yet.) Now, maybe a year after launch, they can get away with starting to tighten down things.

If Microsoft had released a diskless, console I also think this would have worked out better for them. Their terms are actually fairly generous if it was an Xbox App store purchase but everyone thinks of the game being the disk, not the software.

Cillfy B has a horse in this race and a lifestyle to defend. The gall that these Executives have is priceless. We need to keep this lifestyle going. We can't acknowledge that maybe WE need to change. That the landscape has changed and we are no longer alone in the ecosystem. Everyone else must.

The fact that games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider sells millions of copies and are still considered failures should be a red flag. Think about that. Resident Evil sells 4.9 million copies. At $60 per copy that's 294 million dollars in gross sales overall!!! And its a failure!

Maybe the party is over. Maybe they should restructure. This is the generation of the Indies. More and more large publishers will fall by the wayside and become extinct because of the fear of change.

Cillfy B has a horse in this race and a lifestyle to defend. The gall that these Executives have is priceless. We need to keep this lifestyle going. We can't acknowledge that maybe WE need to change. That the landscape has changed and we are no longer alone in the ecosystem. Everyone else must.

The fact that games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider sells millions of copies and are still considered failures should be a red flag. Think about that. Resident Evil sells 4.9 million copies. At $60 per copy that's 294 million dollars in gross sales overall!!! And its a failure!

Maybe the party is over. Maybe they should restructure. This is the generation of the Indies. More and more large publishers will fall by the wayside and become extinct because of the fear of change.

Pretty much this.

New technologies are making programming easier, and game creation easier. As the barriers to entry for just building a game crumble, the monster budgets are going to make less and less sense. Unity3D makes it feasible for a single developer to make a good game, and a team of guys in their basement to make a great game.

Game developers should make money, but it's not like Cliffy B and his ilk are living paycheck to paycheck. Refactor, adjust, or die. Don't punish or blame customers, kids, families, and gamers for doing what makes sense.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.